17 December 2012
While there has been a positive response to the winning proposal for the Private Public Partnership (PPP) for Darling Harbour, the enormous cost to the development industry needs rethinking, says the Urban Taskforce.
The Urban Taskforce fully supports the winning scheme for Darling Harbour as having the key ingredients to drive renewal of the precinct and reposition Sydney in the regional convention and exhibition market.
“Unfortunately the PPP process ends up lauding the winner and down playing the losers who often spend vast amounts of money that is unrecoverable,” says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson.
“At the recent announcement of the winner for the Darling Harbour PPP, the Chair of Infrastructure NSW, Nick Greiner stated that according to his design review panel the winner was ˜very much the best of the two designs. There did not seem to be much acknowledgement of the extensive work by the losing team who no doubt must now carry their multi-million dollar costs.
“In the interest of transparency it would be useful for the public to see both designs for Darling Harbour and this may well inform the design process from here on.
“Preparing PPPs can cost each proponent multiple millions of dollars and much of the expenditure is wasted. In Queensland PPPs often choose a preferred partner earlier thus saving the industry from millions of dollars of unrecoverable expenditure.
“The NSW government needs to look at ways that lead to less expenditure by multiple bidders by selecting a preferred partner earlier in the process.
“The government should also commit to publically exhibiting all design proposals in a PPP process along with the design review panels comments so that the enormous amount of work by all parties can be seen by the community.
